Thursday, February 26, 2015

1. The Midrash opens our parsha by explaining why Hashem chose
to call Bnei Yisrael specifically a zayis, an olive, when there are so many
other beautiful plants that the Jewish people are compared to in Tanach:

Just as the zayis is pounded and crushed and beaten until it
finally produces a drop of precious oil, so too, Bnei Yisrael are sometimes
beaten and oppressed by our enemies until we finally cry out a precious cry to
G-d and he answers us.

How does that answer the question?Why not compare us to the grape or the fig or
some other fruit that doesn’t require pounding and beating to bring out its
beauty?

The Sefas Emes (5639) explains that it’s no chiddush to say you are
wonderful and beautiful when everything is perfect and life and smooth.What Chazal are telling us is that even when
we need a little pounding, even when Hashem is forced to bring suffering on us,
when we are not looking so good, it doesn’t mean he loves us any less or wants to hurt us.Even when we are being punished, that
punishment is like the crushing of the zayis – it removes the outer chaff and
reveals the wonderful oil that is stored inside (see this previous post for a
different approach).2. There is an interesting Midrash in the middle of the parsha
that says that when Hashem told Moshe, “V’atah hakreiv eilecha es Aharon
achicha v’es banav…” Moshe was angry and upset.Hashem consoled him by noting that Moshe was the one who delivered the
Torah to Klal Yisrael and therefore has that merit.

Is it possible that Moshe was jealous of Aharon being
selected instead of him?The same Moshe
Rabeinu who pleaded with G-d to select Aharon to be the go’el of Klal Yisrael
instead of him?

There are a bunch of meforshim who all take basically the
same approach, but I’m going to use a Ksav Sofer because he puts the answer in
the context of a vort from his father the Chasam Sofer that at least for me, given the events I’ve been dealing with, had a little more meaning.The Navi (Melachim I 2:1-3) writes that when
David haMelech grew old and was about to die, he commanded his son saying as
follows:

וַיִּקְרְבוּ יְמֵי דָוִד לָמוּת וַיְצַו אֶת שְׁלֹמֹה בְנוֹ לֵאמֹראָנֹכִי הֹלֵךְ בְּדֶרֶךְ כָּל הָאָרֶץ וְחָזַקְתָּ וְהָיִיתָ לְאִישׁ:He then goes on with additional instructions about being a
mentch and keeping Torah, etc.There is
one phrase that doesn’t fit.“Anochi
holeich b’derech kol ha’aretz” is not, as the rest of what David goes on to say
is, an exhortation to Shlomo to do anything.It’s a description of David’s condition, a recognition that he is about
to die.Shouldn’t it therefore come
before the word, “Vayitzav…,” before David starts giving Shlomo a final charge?

The Chasam Sofer answers that once a person passes on, they
are no longer a “holeich.”Their
situation is static – they cannot “go” anywhere.They are spiritually fixed in place.But there is an exception.If a person has decedents who take
inspiration from his life and therefore dedicate themselves to doing more mitzvos and learn Torah, that person’s
spiritual “stock” (so to speak) continues to rise even after death -- they continue to be a "holeich."David exhorted Shlomo to first and
foremost make him a “holeich,”make him someone who will continue to grow and
not remain static after death.

When Moshe heard that not only Aharon, but also his children
as well, were called to be kohanim, he was jealous of that spiritual legacy
that Aharon would be able to pass on to his children. Moshe Rabeinu did not have children who were like him, but he desired to be a "holeich" even after death as well. Hashem consoled Moshe with the observation
that he, Moshe, gave us Torah, and through our learning, we, all of Klal
Yisrael, not just Moshe’s children, in effect carry on his legacy.

Tuesday, February 24, 2015

No matter how stupid anything I write here is, I could always count on the fact that I would have at least one reader – my father. I could say the same about life in general. Even when I did something stupid, even if he disagreed with me, even when he might have been critical, my father said his piece but was always there for me to rely on. Unfortunately, last Monday on 27 Shevat my father passed away.

I started my hesped last week with an anecdote, thinking that even if I choke up and don’t make it through the whole thing, this one story alone would be enough to sum up my father: last Sunday I was out somewhere with my wife and kids, and on the way back one of my girls wanted to stop and go shopping. Now, my wife and I regard shopping with teenagers as a form of torture, so we went home instead. After we got home, my daughter resumed pleading her case, and this time she played her trump card – “Grandpa takes me shopping.” What my daughter did not take into account was that there is nothing that my father would not do, no place he would not go, no errand he would not run, no matter how time consuming, boring, or burdensome – even going shopping with teenage girls – if it was for the sake of his grandchildren. Grandpa was willing to endure what even a parent would not. My brother mentioned that one of his kids once called home to say that she was getting out of school two periods earlier than usual and she knew she would be told to sit and wait for the bus, so she was just calling to let them know that she called Grandpa first and he was already on the way to get her. There are many such examples I could go on and write about.

And as I learned during shiva, it wasn’t even just his own grandchildren that my father did these things for. There was the neighbor’s twins who don’t have grandparents that he took out for ice cream every year on their birthday. There was another neighbor’s son that he took to a baseball game. And again, there are many similar stories we heard that I could relate.

My father was born in 1933. Like so many others in his time, his education consisted of public school and a smattering of Hebrew school classes afterwards. He attended college only to get an Associate’s degree, and then he went out and joined the workforce to make a living. He for years worked in someone else’s business, only later in life owning a share and managing it on his own. Yet my father made sure that his own children did attend yeshiva, even if he had to struggle very hard to make tuition payments and scrimp and save to do it. He made sure that I was able to go to college, graduate school, learn for smicha and in kollel. He pushed for Marine Park Jewish Center to move beyond being the typical “traditional” synagogue that once was so common in America and become a place that the new orthodox families in his neighborhood would feel comfortable attending – and today that shul is bursting with mispallelim. He worked with my brother and helped him when he started his own business at a very young age. “Ashrei mi she’ba l’kan v’talmudo b’yado” – my father may not have been able to learn up a blatt gemara, but he had “talmudo b’yado,” a life of actions and good works that helped better his family, his neighbors, and his community.

There is more that could be said and should be said, but the past week has been very difficult, and it will take some time to get back into the swing of things. I just wanted to share the news with those who may not have heard.

Friday, February 13, 2015

1) Why does the Torah place open its
discussion of civil law with the idea of eved ivri?Why not talk about theft, propertly law,
shomrim, etc,. all of which seem more common and more basic to establishing a
just society than the laws of someone sold into slavery as a result of not
being able to pay his debts?And then
there is the term “eved ivri” itself: Rashi already notes that it’s a confusing
phrase – does it mean a slave (even non-Jewish) owned by a Jewish master, or
does it mean the slave himself is Jewish?Rashi has to connect the pasuk of “ki tikneh eved ivri” to another pasuk
in Devarim of “ki yimacheir lecha achicha ha’ivri” to clarify and derive that
it is in fact talking about a slave who is Jewish. I was studying Chumash (a different parsha) with
my youngest daughter a week or so ago and she asked a great question: if the
Torah means what Rashi says, why doesn’t the Torah itself say so clearly?We could ask the same question here: why does
the Torah opt for the longer, more ambiguous phrase of “eved ivri” that
requires a peirush Rashi to unravel instead of just simply saying “ivri,” which
is both shorter and leaves no doubt that it means someone who is Jewish?Lastly, the introduction of “ki tikneh eved
ivri,” “When you acquire a Jewish slave…” seems unnecessary.We are not discussing the laws of kinyanim
here; we are discussing when and how the slave goes free.The fact that the slave had to have been
bought seems redundant and irrelevant to the main point of the parsha.Why does the Torah bother to mention it?

When we hear the word “slavery” we
immediately think of whippings, discrimination, perhaps even torture.But this is not the concept of slavery the
Torah speaks about in our parsha.I would
bet that if people went through the laws of avadim they might even find that
they would be willing to trade their jobs with the job of being an eved because
of the protections and security built into the system.Why is the Torah’s concept of slavery so
different than the concept we think of?“Ki
li Bnei Yisrael avadim” – Hashem has declared that we are his servants.A Jew is not hefker.We are responsible to Hashem, but by the same
token, Hashem as our master looks after our interests as well. The Alshich
explains that this is the meaning behind the phrase “eved ivri.”Torah tells the potential slave master up
front that when he buys a slave, what he is buying is an someone who already is
indentured, someone who is already an “eved” and belongs to a Higher authority
than their own.There are limits to what
can be done to the Jewish slave because ownership is not absolute – it must
answer to a prior claim, to the real “owner” of every ivri, namely G-d.Without that extra phrase “eved,” the entire
moral thrust of the parsha is missing.

It’s this concept of “ki li Bnei
Yisrael avadim” which is the backbone for the entire parsha of Mishpatim and
therefore serves as its first chapter.Just this past week a news anchor declared that “our rights do not come
from G-d,” something that would have been news to the founding fathers of the
USA.More importantly for us, it is a
mistake the reveals the chasm between the Torah’s idea of rights, which do stem
from G-d, from “ki li Bnei Yisrael avadim,” and the idea of rights in other
cultures and societies.

2) In an earlier post I wrote that the
eved ivri is pierced only if he chooses to stay on with his master and not at
the time that he chooses to sell himself because at the time he made the choice
to become an eved he may not have known what he is getting himself into.If after experiencing avdus he still hasn’t
learned the lesson, then he deserves to be punished.The Sefas Emes raises an objection: shouldn’t
the choice to remain an eved be a less serious offense considering that the
eved has gotten used to the situation and become habituated to it?“Ahavti es adoni v’es ishti v’es banay…”For better or worse, the slave is comfortable
where he is and doesn’t welcome change.

The answer is that it’s this
habituation to being a slave that is exactly what we are punishing!To say that one is comfortable being an eved only
proves how low and degraded the individual has allowed himself to become.

3) Let me end off with something about
shekalim.I don’t think there is a
charity in the world that would turn away donations, yet that’s exactly what
the Torah seems to suggest: “he’ashir lo yarbeh v’ha’dal lo yamit,” the rich
can’t give more than a half a shekel and the poor can’t give less.Shouldn’t the person who wants to give be
encouraged, not turned away?

Some organizations send letters where
you can just check a box to confirm the amount you want to give.What’s interesting is the scale of the
donations you can choose from on these letters: you have your organizations
where the lowest amount is something like $18, but then you have the
organizations where the lowest amount is $100 and it goes up exponentially from
there.It’s either a deliberate ploy to
try to get a higher amount or it just doesn’t occur to them that some people
may not have $100 to plunk down. In
either case, when you get that letter, you feel what’s the point of checking
the box that says “other” and sending in your $18 – that’s clearly not what
they are interested in.The same idea
holds true for shekalim. Imagine if when the shekalim were collected the first
gut stepped forward with a hugesack of
money, the next guy has an even bigger sack, and then along comes a guy like me
with a half shekel – I would just turn around and go home.Why bother when clearly it’s the big rollers
who are managing the whole show?So the
Torah says there is one box to check here: half a shekel.Everyone can pitch in equally.

But what about the guy who is so
motivated, who wants to give more?The
Sefas Emes says a brilliant answer: that individual is giving, and what he is
giving is worth more than his dollars – he is giving others the opportunity to
have a share and participate. He is giving part of “his” mitzvah to the tzibur
so that everyone can have a chance.That’s
no less a form of generosity than writing a bigger check, and sometimes it's an even harder
mitzvah to do.

Thursday, February 12, 2015

What’s the din if b’dieved a tzibur was not able to read parshas shekalim on the appropriate Shabbos – can they do a makeup next Shabbos or some other time?

At first glance one would think that the 4 parshiyos are just like the special readings done on any Yom Tov. If, for example, you don’t do the correct Torah reading on the first day of Pesach, you can’t make it up the week after Pesach. So too, if you miss reading shekalim on the appropriate week, there is no makeup.

R’ Akiva Eiger paskens this way, but the Eishel Avraham and Maharam Shi”k disagree. The gemara (Meg 29b) compares the takanah to read shekalim to the din of learning hilchos yom tov 30 days before a chag. Since the new shekalim had to be brought by Rosh Chodesh Nisan, the reading was done 30 days earlier to give people advance notice to prepare. Obviously if you don’t start learning hilchos Yom Tov exactly 30 days before a chag, that doesn’t mean you should give up – aderaba, start the next day or as soon as possible (Shu”T Maharam Shi”K 365).

It sounds like the machlokes revolves around the classic issue of whether the reason behind a takanah impacts the din’s parameters. According to R’ Akiva Eiger, there was a takanah to read shekalim on a specific shabbos – the reason behind the takanah does not change anything. According to the Maharam Shi”k, we take the reason into account.

If you want to go a step further, perhaps the Maharam Shi”k would say that if indeed the reading of shekalim belonged on the list of takanos of special Torah readings for special days, then R’ Akiva Eiger would be right. But it doesn’t belong on that list. The takanah is not a din in kri’as haTorah – it’s simply a reminder. It’s the equivalent of the gabai giving a klap on the bimah and yelling out “Don’t forget whatever.” There is no halachic structure called “give a klap on the bimah,” so Chazal used the structure of kri’as haTorah instead to accomplish the same goal. The gemara’s comparison to the din of learning hilchos hachag before Yom Tov is not just a superficial analogy to make the point of when shekalim should be read -- it's telling us that the two halachos are fundametally similar. Just like learning hilchos ha'chag is just a means of getting us in the mindset for Yom Tov, so too, reading shekalim is just a means to an end, a utilitarian reminder. Not so the kri'ah on Yom Tov, which is an expression of and helps establish the underlying kedushas hayom (for more on that, see this post).

Wednesday, February 11, 2015

Our parsha teaches us that if an eved
ivri chooses to remain with his master instead of seizing the opportunity to go
free at the end of his servitude, his ear is pierced as a punishment and he
remains enslaved until yoveil.Why
pierce the ear?Rashi quotes from Chazal
that the ear that heard on Sinai that ‘Bnei Yisrael are servants [only] to me
[G-d]’ and ignored that message and took a human master deserves to be punished
with piercing.

Everyone asks: if that’s the reason
for piercing the ear, shouldn’t it be done when the individual first gets himself
sold into slavery?Why wait until the
sentence is over and he chooses to opt for an extension?

R’ Shmuel Ya’akov Rubenstein in his
sefer She’eiris Menachem answers that when a slave is first sold, he may not
realize what he is getting himself into.The full force of what slavery means may hit a person only after he experiences
it, after he tastes what life is like under else’s thumb, and after he has suffered
a bit.If after all that the person
still prefers slavery to living as a free man, then the Torah says this person
deserves the punishment of piercing.

The Shem m’Shmuel explains that the
eved ivri suffers from delusional thinking.He comes to his master and claims that he prefers to remain enslaved
because he loves his wife and his children, “ahavti es ishti v’es banay…”He does not realize that “his” wife and “his”
children are merely chattel, property of his master.He entered slavery perhaps not realizing
fully what he was getting into, and after spending time as slave he is no wiser
to his circumstance than he was before.

A person sometimes cannot be blamed
for making a wrong decision.The full
import of choices are sometimes realized and felt only after the fact.But a person can be blamed for ignoring
reality and not learning from his circumstances.

I could do multiple posts a day every day for reasons to be disgusted with President Hussein and the Democrat party, but there are other blogs to read for that (not that the Republicans are much better…) Killing of Jews by an Islamic terrorist is now just some random act of violence (link)? This takes the cake. But what is more disturbing than President Hussein, from whom I do not expect better, is the lack of reaction to any of what is going on by many of our communal organizations. Where’s the outrage? Where are the marches? Where are the full page-ads? Where are the rallies and sit-in? The laissez faire attitude of American Jewry is incredible. Here is the reality we face: Iran is going to get the ability to make a nuclear bomb because this President has no interest in stopping them (link). The EU is going to pressure Israel to pull back to pre-1967 borders (link). European Jewry is under attack (link) and vanishing (link).

I think back to the 30,000 or so Jews who gathered in the streets of NY to say tehillin (read: protest) not because of all of the above – no! They gathered to say tehillim because yeshiva students would have to register for the draft in order to defend our country, our State of Israel (link). This is the only thing that is worth staging a protest for, worth gathering in the streets to be noticed when davening for?! I give up – I have no clue what most of the folks in our community are thinking.

It is absolutely depressing. People such as myself have very little power to do anything. I don’t run an organization, I don’t have funds to get the word out, I don’t have political power of influence. I wonder if the little I can do actually makes any difference, but even if it's just a blog post, even if it's just an e-mail to a Senator, it's better than doing nothing.

One thing we can do that I know does make a difference is to daven -- daven that Hashem overlooks our own stupidity and shortcomings and gives us the help that we may not deserve, but that we sorely need.

Tuesday, February 10, 2015

The Torah introduces the parsha
relating Yisro’s suggestion to appoint judges by telling us that the episode
occurred, “mi’macharas…,” (18:13) “It was on the day after….”The obvious question: the day after
what?Had you asked me, I would have
said it means the day after the immediately preceding episode of Yisro coming,
offering korbanos, and sharing a meal with Moshe, Aharon, and the elders.The Mechilta, however, comments that “mi’macharas”
means the day after Yom Kippur. It could be that there is no contradiction
between the Mechilta and the simple pshat – it could be that the day after Yiso’s
arrival also happened to be the day after Yom Kippur.Ramban, however, rejects that possibility out of hand.If “mi’macharas” means the day after the
seudah, it cannot also be the day after Yom Kippur, because that would mean the
seudah was eaten on Yom Kippur!

The Ramban’s language seems to give
away a weakness in his argument that Maharal picks up on.What does the Ramban mean when he says they
could not have eaten *if* there was a Yom Kippur?Apparently there is room for doubt, or room
to argue that there was not a Yom Kippur in the year that Yisro came.We only find the commandment of how to
celebrate Yom Kippur later, in Parshas Acharei Mos.Maybe Yom Kippur was not celebrated until the
second year in the desert, after the construction and dedication of the
Mishkan, but not that first year when Yisro came.Perhaps in that first year it was still permissible
to eat on Yom Kippur.

The Maharal understood that Ramban was
using the word “if” as a hypothetical, like the word “if” in this sentence: if you
had studied for your test, you would have gotten a better grade.But the word “if” can also be used as a conditional
statement, like in this sentence: you can’t have desert if you don’t finish
your food.The Taz in Divrei David
suggests that this is what the Ramban meant – the day of Yom Kippur is
conditional on fasting.You can’t have a
Yom Kippur and eat your cake too.The
Ramban was not implying the possibility that Yom Kippur was not celebrated – he
was saying that it would be impossible to have a Yom Kippur absent fasting.

The Taz is telling us a chiddush:
the kedushas ha’yom of Yom Kippur goes hand in hand with it being a day of
fasting. In other words, fasting is not
just something you do on Yom Kippur -- fasting is part of the definition of the
day of Yom Kippur.To use the term Yom
Kippur, as the Mechilta does, to describe a day in which a festive seudah was
eaten, is an oxymoron.(What about a
choleh who must eat on Yom Kippur – do other aspects of the same kedushas hayom
remain intact or is the whole kedushas hayom diminished in some way?Something to think about…)

There is another reason Ramban might
find the Maharal’s position unpersuasive.Ramban in many places (see the notes in the Chavel edition for a list)
holds that regardless of where a mitzvah appears in the text of Torah, the
command to observe that mitzvah was been given at Sinai. The fact that Yom Kippur is first described in
Parshas Acharei Mos does not mean that before that point in time there was no
mitzvas ha’yom of Yom Kippur. Rashi
offers a different reason for not reading “mi’macharas” as the day after Yisro
shared a seudah with Moshe and Aharon, so it could very well be that Rashi does
not accept this position of the Ramban.Something to look into…

Friday, February 06, 2015

According to some views (see Ramban),
the parsha of Yisro’s coming to join Klal Yisrael is out of place.Chronologically, the story took place after
mattan Torah, yet it appears here in Parshas Yisro before mattan Torah.Why?

The Ishbitzer in Mei haShiloach
explains that this parsha is an introduction to what Torah is all about.Yisro worshipped every avodah zarah in the
world -- he was a priest to avodah zarah!And still, Yisro was drawn to Torah.There is no tumah that is so strong that it can prevent a kabbalas
haTorah if a person wants to receive it.

Those last words are key -- a person
has to want to make a kabbalah.The
gemara says that when Moshe went up to get the Torah the angels put up a
protest and did not want Torah to be given to mankind.Hashem told Moshe that he should answer
them.The Maharal (Derush al haTorah)
asks why Hashem told Moshe to answer the angels – why didn’t Hashem himself
intervene and give them an answer?After
all, it was Hashem who decided that he was going to give his Torah to the
Jewish people!The Maharal answers (and
this is a good vort to keep in mind for Shavuos) that G-d’s giving the Torah to
mankind instead of angels is predicated on mankind wanting the Torah.The desire for Torah has to come from within
us and be expressed by us – it has to be our answer, not something G-d can
thrust upon us.

According to one view in Chazal it
was hearing about the splitting of Yam Suf that drew Yisro to Klal
Yisrael.What was it about this event in
particular that caught Yisro’s attention?The Beis Ya’akov explains that kri’as Yam Suf revealed something significant.Hashem created the world with
boundaries.We read in Parshas Braishis
how Hashem divided the land from the sea so that the oceans stay in their place
and the land exists in its place.There
are boundaries as well between people and between nations.Klal Yisrael is distinct from the rest of the
world and has a relationship with Hashem like no other people.Kri’as Yam Suf revealed that those boundaries
are not absolute -- what was once a sea can become dry land.If so, reasoned Yisro, the boundary between
himself – an outsider, a foreigner -- and Klal Yisrael could be overcome as
well.

This same message is also reflected in
the other view that holds that Yisro came because he heard about the battle
with Amalek.As we discussed last week,
when Moshe lifted his hands and caused Bnei Yisrael to look up in tefillah, the
tide of battle turned in their favor.Picture
the two armies of Bnei Yisrael and Amalek deadlocked in battle, each bound by
the limits of their own efforts and own strength.Suddenly, the people see Moshe’s hands raised,
they turn to Hashem, and they break through the enemy lines.The boundaries that had been there before,
whether the boundaries of the enemy lines, whether the limits of their own
ability, were no more. Again, boundaries are not absolute.With enough will and enough tefilah, they can
be broken.

I didn’t see it in the Beis Ya’akov
(I didn’t go through all the pieces), but perhaps this is why the Torah prefaces
mattan Torah with the story of Yisro. What greater boundary exists than the
boundary between heaven and earth?This
was the angels complaint – how could a heavenly Torah be sent down to
earth?And irony of ironies, the parsha of
mattan Torah itself stresses that the people had to remain in the boundaries
set aside for them, distant from the mountain, to obey the mitzvah of
hagbalah.We therefore need to first
read about kri’as Yam Suf, the battle with Amalek, the coming of Yisro, to appreciate
that not all boundaries are absolute – moral Moshe can go up to shamayim,
Hashem can come down to har Sinai, and human beings, with all our frailties,
can receive a Torah as well.

Thursday, February 05, 2015

Chazal tell us that Hashem held Har
Sinai over the heads of Klal Yisrael to force them to accept the Torah or else…It sounds like they were strong-armed into
the agreement.

Is an agreement arrived at through
coercion valid?The gemara in Baba Basra
has a rule that “talu’hu v’zavin – zvini zevini,” that if a person is coerced
into making a sale, the sale is considered valid.The reason people sell things is because they
need cash – every sale is to some degree something the seller would prefer not
to do, but which he must do.Coercion is
just an explicit form of pressure instead of the usual implicit form.

The Ba’al haIttur, however, holds
that while someone can be forced to sell, he/she cannot be forced to buy (see
Rama C.M. 205:12).Bnei Yisrael were in
effect buyers of the Torah, not sellers.They were being forced to agree to accept something, not to give
something away.So what good was their
coerced agreement?Lots of answers, but I won't spoil the fun of working it out yourself.

Wednesday, February 04, 2015

I don't know about you, but in my
part of the world the ba'al koreh read the pasuk at the end of Beshalach as
"machoeh emcheh es zeicher Amalek..." with a tzeirei under the letter
zayin, and not "zecher Amalek" with a segol under the zayin. I've
leined this parsha myself a number of times and have done the same thing. Yet,
in many of not most shuls, when parshas zachor is read, the ba'al korei reads
"timcheh as zeicher Amalek" with a tzeiri and then rereads the same
phrase again as "zecher Amalek" with a segol to cover both
possibilities. Why don't we do that here?

My initial thought was that the only
reason we bother to read it both ways for parshas zachor is because the reading
of zachor is a din d'oraysa, so we want to cover all our bases. For the regular
kri'as haTorah of Shabbos which is “only” a din derabbanan, we don't worry if
we are off a little bit. If this sevara is correct, then were one were to rely
on the MG"A to be yotzei zachor by hearing the kri'ah on Purim morning
that comes from the pesukim at the end of Beshalach, then perhaps one should
read zeicher/zecher in that context both ways. I've never heard anyone do so.

I found a different explanation in
the back of the Mahari"l Diskin al haTorah. The Mahari"l quotes the
minhag brought in the name of the GR"A (which we will get back to shortly)to read the word in Parshas Ki
Teitzei as "zecher" with a segol, and wonders why no one reads it
that way here in Beshalach. He suggests that the word "zecher" with a
segol has a stronger connotation and implies that men, women, children, and
even animals of Amalek must be killed. The word "zeicher," with a
tzeirei, has a weaker connotation and does not make that implication clear. In Parshas Ki Teizeti where the Torah is
commanding us what to do with Amalek, we spell out clearly the full parameters
of the mitzvah, which is to destroy the “zecher” (with a segol) of Amalek,
every remnant of them. In Beshalach where the Tora is speaking about what G-d
will do to Amalek, "machoh emcheh...," even if the implication is not
100% clear, k'lapei shemaya galya anyway what will happen to them.

A few issues: 1) I don’t know a source
for there being a difference in meaning (or at least implication/emphasis)
between saying zecher and zeicher (this could just be my own ignorance); 2) In
Ma’aseh Rav #28 it is brought down that the GR”A read the pasuk in Ashrei as
zecher (with a segol), which suggests that he read ever z-ch-reish word with a
segol, including the pasuk at the end of Beshalach; 3) R’ Chaim Volozhiner
claimed that he heard the GR”A lein parshas zachor (it is brought down in Ma’aseh
Rav that the GR”A would get the aliya and read the parsha himself) and heard
the GR”A say zeicher (with a tzeireh).If this is correct, the whole premis behind the Maharil’s observation is
moot.

Adding up the Ma’aseh Rav, the Mahari”l
Diskin, what R’ Chaim Volozhiner reported, it seems that we have different
traditions as to what the GR”A said and why he did or didn’t change his reading
in different places.How do we make
sense of all this?In the footnotes to
the new edition of Ma’aseh Rav there is brilliant chiddush suggested by R’ Meshulam
Roth that I am going to put together with a GR”A in Kol Eliyahu:

Why was Moshe told specifically in connection
with Amalek “sim b’oznei Yehoshua?”Since
Moshe had to write the parsha, “..ksov zos zikaron ba’sefer,” wouldn’t that have
been enough for Yehoshua to get the message?

The GR”A quotes the gemara (Baba
Basra 21) that tells us that when David sent Yoav to do battle with Amalek,
Yoav killed all the males and reported back, “Mission accomplished.”David was not happy and told Yoav he had only
done half the job.He told Yoav she
should have killed everyone -- why did do only half the job?Yoav answered that when he was in school, his
teacher taught him that the pasuk reads “timcheh es zachar Amalek,” to blot out
the males of Amalek, and so he did.What
a mistake that teacher made!David corrected
Yoav and explained that the pasuk is “timcheh es zeicher Amalek” and everyone
must be killed.

Explains the GR”A, this is why the Torah
stresses “sim b’oznei Yehoshua,” to, literally translated, “put the [parsha] in
Yehoshua’s ear.”Since the Torah has no
vowels, without an oral tradition, who knows if the word is zachar (like Yoav
misread it) or zeicher?Yehoshua had to
hear the words, otherwise he wouldn’t know how to fulfill the mitzvah.

Now for the fancy part.When you have a word that has a double kamatz
and you put it b’smichut to make a conjunction with another word, the double
kamatz changes to a double segol.Take
the word “ashan.”If you want to say “smoke
of the furnace,” you say “k’eshen hakivshan,” with a double segol, not “k’ashan”.Yoav’s rebbe was not a simpleton who made an
obvious error and read “zeicher” as “zachar.”Do you think the rebbe never hear kri’as haTorah or parshas zachor?The mistake was that he heard the ba’al koreh
read “zecher” Amalek with a double-segol, instead of “zeicher” with a
tzeireh!The rebbe assumed that “zecher
Amalek” is b’smichut, and therefore it’s like eshen and ashan, so
zecher=zachar, and the mitzvah is to kill only the males.

Based on this, we can explain both
mesoros of what the GR”A did, albeit exactly the opposite of how the Mahari”l
Diskin thought the GR”A read the parshiyos.When the GR”A read parshas zachor, he read “zeicher” with a tzeireh –
not like Yoav’s rebbe’s mistaken reading.This fits with R’ Chaim Volozhiner report of what the GR”A did.However, when the GR”A read the pesukim at
the end of Beshalach, where the Torah is reporting, not commanding us what to
do, he read it as “zecher,” with a segol.

You can nitpick at the loose ends
that remain: 1) we still have the Ma’aseh Rav #28 that suggests that the GR”A
read everything as zecher and not zeicher; and 2) “Ksov zos zikaron b’sefer v’sim
b’oznei Yehoshua” seems to be referring to the parsha of Beshalach, not the
pesukim at the end of Ki Teitzeih.Also,
based on this there is no reason to reread the word at the end of Ki Teitzeh as “zecher” just to
be yotzei the GR”A.

Despite the loose ends, the chiddush
gave me a lot of oneg Shabbos.For those
reading this, it’s like leftover cholent on Wednesday, but it’s the best I can
do.

Monday, February 02, 2015

The Torah tells us
that during the battle against Amalek when Moshe raised his hands, Bnei Yisrael
rallied against the enemy; when he lowered his hands, the offensive
lagged.The famous Mishna in Rosh
haShana asks, “Could Moshe’s hands cause the battle to turn one way or the
other?”The Mishna answers that Moshe’s
hands by themselves were powerless.However, when Moshe raised his hands, the people directed their
attention to Heaven and davened, and that’s what caused them to succeed.When his hands were lowered and the people
directed their attention elsewhere, they faltered.

Why do Chazal ask
this question only about this parsha?We
read earlier in Beshalacha that Moshe stretched his hand over the Yam to cause
it to split, yet we don’t find a Mishna that asks, “Could Moshe’s hands have
caused the Yam to split?” Why not?

There is a fundamental
difference between the destruction of Mitzrayim and the battle against
Amalek.The plagues and the splitting of
Yam Suf that destroyed Egypt were overt, supernatural miracles that proved that
G-d could bend the rules of nature for the sake of Klal Yisrael.The battle against Amalek proved that G-d was
with Bnei Yisrael even when they fought without bending the rules.Moshe had to choose soldiers, he had to
select a general (Yehoshua), Bnei Yisrael had to use arms and go out to fight –
this was war being fought as any other people wage war.

In the parsha
immediately preceding the war against Amalek, Bnei Yisrael complained that they
did not know, “Ha’yesh Hashem b’kirbeinu…”They knew that G-d was “out there,” so to speak, in the heavens, ready
to perform miracles when needed, but what Bnei Yisrael was missing was the sense
that G-d was involved in the day to day of their lives, among them and working
behind the scenes to protect and help them.The war against Amalek was an answer to this complaint.

Obviously the
hands of Moshe have no power to bring about the supernatural.But, writes the Netzi”v, the war against
Amalek was not a war waged through supernatural means – it was a war conducted
b’derech ha’teva.Therefore, it is
specifically in this context that Chazal ask what role Moshe’s hands played in
winning or losing the battle.Why would
b’derech ha’teva the raising of Moshe’s hands or the lowering of his hands have
made any difference?

The answer, Chazal
teach us, is that Moshe’s hands directed the tefilos of Am Yisrael.Tefilah is not a supernatural, miraculous
means of getting help.Tefillah is part
and parcel of how the derech ha’teva works.As Rashi writes in Parshas Braishis, the rains did not fall until Adam
was there to daven for them.Rain is a
natural phenomenon, but nature following its course also requires our tefilos.